Title: Lily White and Poppy Red
Fandom:  Hadestown
Author: nyctanthes
Relationships: Persephone/Hades, Persephone/Eurydice
Rating: General Audiences
Word Count: approx. 1000
Content Notes: Excessive consumption of alcohol
Author notes: Recently changed my DW name; previous works are tagged sjnt. A few bits of text come from the musical, and in particular the song Flowers.




Singing La la la la la la laaaa

Singing La la la la la la laaaa

Singing La la la la bull

Singing La la la la shit

Singing Bull-fucking-shit

The problem is, this has all happened, previously. She reckons she's done this before; more than once. She can’t fully entirely remember, time and drink doing what they do to memory and gray matter, even the memory and gray matter of goddesses.

But this particular reunion, this renewal of vows feels familiar. Step, sway, shuffle. Shuffle, step, sway. Hot breath of the underworld on her brow. Heavy arms wrapped around her in belonging, in possession. In love.

If it were new and unexpected, if it were welcome, she wouldn’t feel this weary, this resigned. Would she?

And why not? If she is to travel up then down then up then down: in rhythm and sorrow, in perpetuity. Why not - again and again - come together, drift apart, come together?

If the stories are to be believed, this is what they do. And why shouldn’t they?

The boy leaves; the girl, the others, the status quo return. Once more they are together yet completely alone. Hades a man, nothing more than a man that way. Full of big words and grand gestures when the corn is high. When the tension is ripe and his kingdom (his ego, his legacy, his pride) are under threat of being trampled.

Then his attention drifts, as it’s bound to. What is he to do? She’s gone upstairs, leaving him all on his lonesome: only thousands of brainless shades, one gossipy old man and three slinky crones for company. Did she expect him, this time, to be different? After the building is done for the day (for the night. What difference does it make, down below?) After the banging and clanging, the pounding and sounding, the moaning and groaning of the bells and wheels and whistles and pulleys, the hammers and pickaxes and shovels. (Why need souls already dead be given purpose? Wasn’t it enough that they’d relinquished love, life, sun, sky, air and memory? Must they also work for the privilege of being forgotten? Hades - forever unappreciated, in charge of the realm even the gods fear - his reasoning once made sense; but time, along with ever more elaborate slogans and works and justifications, have hollowed out his wall, and she lost her high ground long ago.)

“That’s what drink is for, my dearest love, my very own,” she spits, only a slight ish following the is, an infinitesimal marbling of the mouth. Only a hint of distaste in his level, lizard gaze.

“Check,” he replies. As if there’s a chance she can win this game.

Before she leaves he lets her crawl across the table, knock all the pieces off the board. Lets her sit in his lap, bill and coo and dribble sloppy kisses along his neck.

When she returns (when she is fetched, like an errant dog or a sulky, peevish slave) months later but always too soon, she remembers there is another reason for his distraction. Sulfur, coal, clay and stone are not, will never be her provenance; but little, pretty girls, soft and round, still becoming will always belong to her. She recalls flowering vines twined through her hair; lush garlands around her throat, hanging between breasts more suggestion than fact. Pale, tender soles of feet that walked across Mother’s plush green fields, gathering flowers in the light of the sun. Flowers that forever bloomed, that did not dare rot.

This one possesses none of that: not a fraction, a blossom, a blade. She can no longer recollect summer and plenty, taken from her long before she was tempted and she descended. She only has memories of frozen ground and leaden sky, of a steel wind that cuts through tattered clothes and swirls round and round tight, cramping bellies.

But Hades is a man, and he sees in her what he wants to.

She sits, beckons. “Come child. Sit with me.” Drink with me. And she does.

Boxes of wine - red, white, and pink. Rotgut of tarnished bronze that boils her heart before she’s finished swallowing it down. Moonshine clear as waters that once were hers. It sizzles and scrapes her esophagus. Such a human word, base and grunting and functional, and yet it appears she has one too.

She tells the girl stories, sings to her of the world above. Of olive groves and lemon trees baking in the dusty, orange heat of June. Of terraced fields of rice, both dry and flooded, swirling patterns of green and brown set against misting mountains and sapphire sky. Of wine, true wine, that sparkles and shimmers in the glass: early summer, late spring in every sip. Cool and crisp and endless. A world that exists only in pockets, only for the few, but the child doesn’t know that. Doesn’t know that in the world above, there’s nothing for her to miss.

One day - one night; what difference does it make, but she continues to wonder - she is feeling especially low and red. She sings to the girl, already fading, dimmer than she was just days and nights before, of that callow boy. Of his endless wandering and his temporary respite in the arms of another (not his true love, whom he’d forsaken and would never forgive himself for casting aside; but he is a man, hence forever willing to make do with whatever, whomever he finds in front of him.) She sings his lament for his truest love. The one he’d deserted, abandoned through his damnable weakness: so brilliant, so pale and fearful and easily distracted. The child weeps, silently, though she cannot remember why.

She kisses her, then, soft. The bruised, moist skin under each eye. The delicate corners of her mouth. The space between her bottom lip and chin, where the tears collect. Delicious.

“Silly girl,” she croons. “There’s no use in crying. You’ve got to take your comfort where you can.”

“Silly girl,” she warbles. “Men are kind, until they’re not. But I’m here. I’m listening.”